Physical Motifs and Concentric Amplification in Godard/Lully's Armide Edward D. Latham Introduction: "Aria" and Genre The role of operatic music in film is traditionally diegetic. For example, in films like The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Philadelphia (1993), and The Godfather III (1990), there is a dramatic motivation for the presence of the music and/or a visual cue that lets the audience know that the characters can actually hear it. Typically, the use of operatic music is also a cultural cue for the exotic or incongruous; it distances the viewer from the onscreen image because of its explicitly performative nature. In Philadelphia, for example, the main character (played by Tom Hanks), "performs" a Puccini aria by lip-synching to a recording of Maria Callas and performing elaborately stylized staging. The setting for this scene immediately cues the audience to the other-worldliness of the aria by bathing Hanks's apartment in lurid red lighting and using jarring camera angles and close-ups. In The Godfather III, as in Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Moonstruck (1987), and Pretty Woman (1990), the role of operatic music is even more explicitly diegetic, since all four depict actual opera performances attended by the characters in the film. In The Shawshank Redemption, the main character plays a Mozart duet over the loudspeakers at Shawshank Prison. What if, however, operatic music were used in a nondiegetic context, as the fundamental thread that binds a film together? Films such as Raging Bull (1980), A Room With A View (1986) and, more recently, The Rock (1996), have experimented with this idea in a limited context, combining opera excerpts with a more traditional film score. The most obvious use of opera as the sole source for a film score would of course be the opera film (such as Hans-Jiirgen Syberberg's Parsifal [1982] or Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni [1979]), but this, like the film musical, belongs to a hybrid genre and must therefore be considered separately. 56 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 19 In 1987, producer Don Boyd and the executive producers at Lightyear Entertainment and Virgin Vision posed an intriguing question: what would happen if nine well-known directors were each presented with the opportunity to direct one opera scene of their choice, in any way they saw fit? The result, called simply Aria, is a collection of nine scenes, from five to fifteen minutes in length, each set to an excerpt or excerpts from a different opera. 1 As a means of tying the disparate scenes together into a cohesive whole, a tenth scene was added, which functions as prelude, interlude, and extended postlude, revealing itself in short segments between the other scenes of Aria. A complete picture of the organization of the film is presented as figure 1; Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, and Ken Russell are among the directors represented. Figure 1. Layout of Aria Scene/Opera Excerpt Director O. Introduction: Scene lOa 1. Scene l: Un Ballo in Maschera (Verdi) (excerpts) (Nicholas Roeg) * Scene lOb 2. Scene 2: La Forza del Destino (Verdi) "La Virgine degli Angeli" (Charles Sturridge ) * Scene lOc 3. Scene 3: Armide (Lully) (excerpts) (Jean-Luc Godard) * Scene lOd 4. Scene 4: Rigoletto (Verdi) (excerpts) (Julien Temple) * Scene lOe 5. Scene 5: Die Tote Stadt (Komgold) "The Lute Song" (Bruce Beresford) * Scene lOf 6. Scene 6: Les Boreades (Rameau) (excerpts) (Robert Altman) * Scene 109 7. Scene 7: Tristan und Isolde (Wagner) "Liebestod" (Franc Roddam) * Scene lOh 8. Scene 8: Turandot (Puccini) "Nessun Dorma" (Ken Russell) * Scene lOi 9. Scene 9: Louise (Charpentier) "Depuis Ie jour" (Derek Jarman) 10. Scene lOj: I Pagliacci (Leoncavallo) "Vesti la giubba" (Bill Bryden) lAria is available on Vision Video VVD 546 (PAL format) and Lightyear Entertainment 54058-3 (NTSC format). Latham, Physical Motifs and Concentric Amplification 57 A formal organization of the type presented in figure 1 urges the viewer to relate each of the nine scenes to the overarching narrative constructed by the tenth, an urge that is augmented by several of the interludes. In Scene lOb, for example, the protagonist (who, we have gathered, is a stylish, potentially wealthy, middle-aged Italian man), enters a church to pray to Mary; this scene is immediately followed by Charles Sturridge's treatment of "La Virgine degli Angeli" from Verdi's La Forza del Destino, in which a young child also prays to Mary. In Scene 10d, the opera singer (for that is what he is, as the audience later discovers) is shown in one of the front boxes of an opera house (the Teatro Ponchielli in Cremona, Italy, according to the credits). In contrast to Scene lOb, where his actions established a strong link with the following scene, he now seems to be reacting to Scene 3 (Jean-Luc Godard's treatment of Lully's Armide), looking up with alarm at the ceiling as the echoes of the final screams of the two protagonists seem to echo in his (and our) ears. Similarly, after Scene 7 (Franc Roddam's interpretation of the "Liebestod" from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde) he is shown staring into his dressing room mirror, his eyes full of tears, as if he were replaying in his mind the double suicide depicted in the scene. The question of the genre of Aria is complex. In one sense, it is an opera film (or, rather, a series of short opera films), since it purports to depict the actions and images described in the texts of each scene. This simple generic designation is complicated, however, by the fact that, with the notable exceptions of the fifth and tenth scenes (and brief excerpts in the third and fourth), the directors do not have the actors lip-synch the text, nor do they bring in opera performers to play the roles. Moreover, though the distinction between diegetic and nondiegetic music is substantially blurred in Scenes 1 and 4, the majority of the music in Aria is nondiegetic, meaning there is no visual indication that the characters can actually hear the music, nor is there any narrative motivation for its presence in the scenes.2 2Scene 5 is somewhat oxymoronic. Though it includes onscreen music (the characters lip-synch throughout), the music is still nondiegetic because it expresses the characters' subjectivity and is therefore not a "public" performance (i.e., the characters are unaware that they are singing). In Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), xii, Carolyn Abbate argues that this is the typical state of nineteenth-century opera. See also James Buhler and David Neumeyer, "Review of Caryl Flinn, Strains of Utopia and Kathryn Kalinak, Settling the Score," Journal of the American Musicological Society 47, no. 2 (1994): 377-81. 58 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 19 The Text: Quinault's Libretto Of all the scenes in the film, the one that is perhaps the most visually and aurally arresting is Jean-Luc Godard's treatment of Lully's Armide. In his analysis of the scene, Nicholas Cook discusses the textual sources for Lully's opera at length; I will not review that information here, except to emphasize that the fundamental theme of the story of Armide and Renaud (or Armida and Rinaldo, in the original Italian) is that of a struggle between opposing forces, both internal and external? Through the use of enchantment, Armide, the Saracen sorceress, captures Renaud, the Christian knight, intending to murder him while defenseless and rid herself and her people of the final obstacle in their path to victory over their enemies. Poised to strike, Armide falters and discovers, after a struggle with her emotions, that she loves Renaud and cannot kill him. Phillipe Quinault, Lully's librettist, externalizes the conflict through personification: he presents Wisdom (La Sagesse), Glory (La Gloire) , Love (L 'Amour) and Hate (La Haine) as actual characters in his drama. 4 In the Prologue, Glory and Wisdom share the stage, each followed by a retinue of heroes and nymphs, respectively. The use of demons in various guises is another ingenious device that Quinault uses to depict opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. In Act II/iv,S for example, the demons appear disguised as "heroic shepherds and shepherdesses," led by "a water nymph," and sing a paean to love: "It is to sport and love that one must give the best days!" ("C'est aux Jeux, c'est aux Amours, qu'il faut donner les beaux jours!,,).6 They then go on to oppose 3My discussion of Godard/Lully's Armide is partially based on work done with Dr. Nicholas Cook in 1995. My work on the scene inspired Dr. Cook to include a chapter on it in his recently published book, Analysing Musical Multimedia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). That chapter, "Reading Film and Rereading Opera: From Armide to 'Aria, '" (Cook, 215-60) constitutes one basis for the present discussion of the scene. 4Love is not actually mentioned as one of the dramatis personae, but after the grand parade of passion-characters in the opening of Act III, Scene 4 (where Hate "comes up out of Hell, accompanied by the Furies, Cruelty, Vengeance, Rage, and the passions that are associated with Hate,") the followers of Hate "eagerly break and burn Love's weapons." As Cook points out, this scene was added by Quinault to the original story by Torquato Tasso, which demonstrates the librettist's desire to amplifY the conflict between the passions (Cook, 216). 5 Act II, Scene 4. This shorthand notation will be used throughout the article. 6Throughout the present discussion, the source used for citations from the libretto is the Lajarte piano-vocal score of Armide (New York: Broude Brothers, 1971).